Alcohol- being a self confessed, resigned to his fate drunk was his last vice and it’s what ultimately led him back to crack, which he felt cocaine as an evil drug that conjured up negative forces (I concur with that it happened to me in the 80s).

He had congenital cardiomyopathy, his brother died of crack and cardiac arrest and so did he.

This guy was a poet. His lyrics didn’t make sense but they did. And so many of his lyrics were about ‘selling out.’

“I’m not dead and I’m not for sale.”

“What’s real and what’s for sale.”

He married a supermodel who was also a drug addict and bipolar but to bear children she needed to stay straight, which she did.

She left him and was interviewed in bipolar magazine which is why I thought they would like my story about him.

This is a long post but what you read may help you out. I’m going back on the trail of researching and finding someone to do genetic testing on me for the best metabolized psych med in the event of my next bipolar depression due to antidepressant fatigue. My antidepressants last typically for a year or two and then poop out. I want to know, ahead of time, what would be the best pill to take. In the last five years, I’ve had incredible luck with Viibryd (2 years), Brintellix and Fetmiza. All of them worked in a week or less and lasted from 8 months to two years. Right now I’m on a combination of Wellbutrin (which I took effectively for a five year period starting fifteen years ago and Brintellix, which is a new drug that they don’t know exactly how it works but for me it was a ‘Rescue’ drug that I use for Code Black situations. I only take it twice a week.

Yes, I talk about meds a lot. Many people with mental illness are still sick, wondering if they are on the right medicine. this post is super long but it’s about a brand new way of finding ‘the right medicine’ that will work for you, as an individual, for your brain chemistry. I think it’s important.

Many of you know that I wrote a letter to my nearest location of a Mayo Clinic, in Jacksonville, Florida. I live near Miami, in Hollywood. My letter was ignored. At Mayo clinic, no matter what kind of health problem you go in for, genetic and enzyme testing is “the standard of care.”

No matter what, when you go to a Mayo Clinic, they do genetic testing and enzyme testing to see what drugs, not what class of drugs-we already know if you need a a statin for high cholesterol for example, but which exact one, be it Lipitor or Zocor or Crestor…see what I mean? Narrowing it down to the exact brand or generic name.

It is important to narrow the possibilities or possibility down precisely to dose you with what YOUR body will metabolize the best.

The problem is that Mayo clinics aren’t taking any new patients and my request to be put on a waiting list when I tried both the Phoenix and Florida locations was met with, “We’re sorry, we aren’t taking new patients and there is no waiting list.”

This sounds like the VA. I wonder if they took pages from the same playbook. Sometimes the medical profession can be a cold, calculating place.

***

Back to the topic of finding the right or a new psych medicine if you’re in a depression relapse,

If the doctor just ‘guesses’ what he thinks might be right, (or which new drug has been promoted lately by a drug rep in whatever means they promote-I’m told Golf trips are sometimes involved), there’s a chance that your genetic makeup and or enzymes will not break down the drug it will just freefloat in your bloodstream; jamming up your internal eliminatory organs, increasing toxicity, negative drug-drug interactions and (god help us) chronic, incurable side effects, like the Tardive Dyskinesia I took. The drug I think caused it was not real effective for me, so my dose was jacked up beyond the recommended top end, and I think that was the last thing I needed-I needed a different drug. This is why I got sick with TD and will have it for life.

What is ideal is finding a drug that your metabolism (read enzmes) breaks down into molecules small enough to pass through the blood-brain barrier, so it can do its’ work and make you whole again. This is very important.

I’ve heard Medicare pays for this testing but right now, but not every doctor who takes the measly compensation of Medicare reimbursement wants to deal with the extra paperwork.

And the ones that will do it that I talked to want ridiculous sums of money, like 500 bucks, to administer the tests, read the results and then prescribe the best drug.

Furthermore those types of ’boutique’ psychiatrists are often the ‘all cash’ ‘no insurance’ and certainly ‘no medicare insurance’ type and don’t do hospital rounds anywhere. That means, that if you are like me, Bipolar I, and might have to go inpatient, they don’t want to treat you. They way they put it to me last time I was depressed and worried I might have to go inpatient it was clear that they did not want ‘acute’ cases, as they put it.

They want the well educated, well heeled, well-off working professional with a mild mood disorder willing to come up with the cash each month for their med check.

Most of the seasoned, really competent good psychiatrists I know (and I’ve had ten second opinions while staying with the same doctor for fifteen years just to know who is out there) well, they’ve already done decades of hospital work and don’t do it anymore either!!!

Pre-retirement, they are reaping the rewards of their years of experience in the trenches, ministering to the very ill, like I was when I met my shrink of fifteen years.

He no longer accepts Medicare or Medicaid or insurance as of 3 years ago. On the plus side, there is continuity of care and I’ve not had to go inpatient for that period of time. Knock on wood.

***********************

But I digress again:

Back to the point of Genetic Testing: We’ve known for some time that not every medicine works for every person. Sadly, for psych patients in depression or a relapse into bipolar depression or schizo issues, it’s a painfully long period of trial and error.

Like I said, one time it took Dr. L to help dig me out of the dark. We tried this and that and in the end we tried another SSRI and I was one of the subgroups of the population who has to wait twelve weeks, not four, for the SSRI in this case, Prozac generic, to become effective. Whew, what a relief. If we had genetically tested me, it would have shown that Prozac would not have been a recommended choice. It only lasted a year anyhow and I had another relapse and switched yet again. I was lucky again. The first one we tried, worked. By the way, he’s cool, he knows I have a sixth sense and lets me help choose what he offers.

Recently I saw a testimonial to the effectivement of genetic testing in a reply to a post on International bipolar Foundation’s Facebook page. Those people, by the way, as well as bipolarhope.com, (bphope.com) are good resources for general and specific information on all sorts of things.

Not to be deterred by the fact that my local mayo clinic’s chief of psychiatry ignored my letter, I’m going to try again. I’m going to announce my journalism credentials and tell them I’ve got both a personal and profession interest in testing to find out which antidepressant would be best in the need of diggin out of my next bipolar depression.

My last one was in April and lasted until July. It was shorter than the year-long one in 2005, but unendurable just the same. I considered suicide every day.

You guys might think I’m strong, like my name but that’s an aspiration. I’m actually not.

I have severe chronic pain and some days I worry about the day coming where I’ve outlived my body’s usefulness and can go no more.

With all the crazy healthy lifestyle choices like raw foods diet, daily exercise and weight training (even though I hate it), I have this feeling I’ll live to be 90, accumulating more side effects from the medicines for side effects.

I’m already swimming in a sea of them. Once again, side effects or the absence of them, can be traced to finding, as Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor said, “The Perfect Drug.”

(For Tardive Dyskinesia info it’s both on IBPF Youtube channel under “Tardive Dyskinesia” part one, symptoms and cause and statistics and part 2, Getting treatment and the Website, ibpf.com “Move Over Movement Disorder).

I’m going to try again to get them to see me, even though they say they are taking no patients.

I’ll let you know what happens and when it happens. If this shit didn’t work, no one would be doing it.

Very similar to Nirvana’s late Kurt Cobain, Weiland was dual diagnosis and his lyrics could be unintelligible. Anyone remember that refrain in ‘Plush,’ where he goes,

“And I feel and I feel when the dogs begin to smell her, will she smell alooooonnneee?”

What the hell was that? It was pain and we all felt it. He was not as well known as Kurt but his demise is no less tragic to me, no smaller of a loss. I was rooting for him. I cried like a baby when I heard he was gone because I knew he struggled with legal issues and back and forth drug addiction. I thought that like Robert Downey Junior or even me, he’d be one of the ‘lucky’ ones.

For cryin out loud, Axel Rose is still alive, why not Scott? And now that I mention that, Scott Weiland had several falling outs with his band and one of his best known side projects, “Velvet Revolver” had two former members of Guns and Roses playing with him.

We know that cocaine was found near his body and that gossip publication,TMZ, was printing stories of his relapse into crack cocaine and alcohol. My legitimate question is, how would they know that? Were they smoking it with him? What also is known is that cardio problems run in his family, crack couldn’t have helped his health. As an exercise bulimic who used to live on the natural Chinese stimulant, Ma Huang, I incurred heart health issues. Branch Block something or other. I have to wear a Holter monitor every year and then they tell me my abnormality falls within ‘normal.’ What I do know is that I never had these issues before Ma Huang.

I picked up with Ma Huang innocently at a health food store in 2000 when I first was given Seroquel and gained weight so fast I panicked. Looking for a healthy way to suppress my appetite, I never dreamed Xenazine was bad for you until it was banned by the FDA.

All I know is that he’s gone and it makes me feel like my hold on life, mental health, sobriety etc is a tenuous one at best. If a giant tree like him falls in the forest, what does it mean for me?

Very similar to Nirvana’s late Kurt Cobain, Weiland was dual diagnosis and his lyrics could be unintelligible. Anyone remember that refrain in ‘Plush,’ where he goes,

“And I feel and I feel when the dogs begin to smell her, will she smell alooooonnneee?”

What the hell was that? It was pain and we all felt it. He was not as well known as Kurt but his demise is no less tragic to me, no smaller of a loss. I was rooting for him. I cried like a baby when I heard he was gone because I knew he struggled with legal issues and back and forth drug addiction. I thought that like Robert Downey Junior or even me, he’d be one of the ‘lucky’ ones.

For cryin out loud, Axel Rose is still alive, why not Scott? And now that I mention that, Scott Weiland had several falling outs with his band and one of his best known side projects, “Velvet Revolver” had two former members of Guns and Roses playing with him.

We know that cocaine was found near his body and that gossip publication,TMZ, was printing stories of his relapse into crack cocaine and alcohol. My legitimate question is, how would they know that? Were they smoking it with him? What also is known is that cardio problems run in his family, crack couldn’t have helped his health. As an exercise bulimic who used to live on the natural Chinese stimulant, Ma Huang, I incurred heart health issues. Branch Block something or other. I have to wear a Holter monitor every year and then they tell me my abnormality falls within ‘normal.’ What I do know is that I never had these issues before Ma Huang.

I picked up with Ma Huang innocently at a health food store in 2000 when I first was given Seroquel and gained weight so fast I panicked. Looking for a healthy way to suppress my appetite, I never dreamed Xenazine was bad for you until it was banned by the FDA.

All I know is that he’s gone and it makes me feel like my hold on life, mental health, sobriety etc is a tenuous one at best. If a giant tree like him falls in the forest, what does it mean for me?